Toasterlab Mixed Reality Performance Atelier

Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, Toasterlab’s Mixed Reality Performance Atelier was a two-year deep dive into the current mixed reality methods used by theatre and performance makers across Canada and the U.S. Starting in July 2019, every four months, an Atelier cohort presented progress on their projects at a symposium hosted by Toasterlab in partnership with other arts institutions and universities and the Atelier’s advisory board, made up of leading artists and technologists working extended reality. When the Atelier concluded in June 2021, Toasterlab shared open-source tools, guidelines, and instructional material for the creation of immersive media in an arts context, primarily organized on our Toasterlab Tools Site.

Check out Toasterlab Tools

Atelier Projects

Our Atelier projects include:

To check out all of Toasterlab’s projects, including those participating in the Atelier, head on over to our projects page.

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Symposiums

Toronto – York University – November 5, 2019

The Mixed Reality Performance Symposium: York is the first of six symposiums hosted by mixed reality producers Toasterlab, and will explore extended and mixed reality performance. Artists and new media creators will share modes of working and recent successes in VR, AR, and immersive theatre. It was done in partnership with the Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology.

Projects include:

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Vancouver – University of British Columbia – February 21, 2020

UBC is the second of six symposiums hosted by mixed reality producers Toasterlab, and will explore extended and mixed reality performance. The focus of this symposium is to provide insight into the production process and hands-on experience with 360VR cameras, VR headsets, geolocation, motion capture and other creation and distribution tools.

Toasterlab Project Updates: – VIDEO

With presentations from:

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Online – FoldA/Howlround – June 4 & 13-19, 2020

The third gathering of the Atelier was planned in partnership with FoldA to integrate with this year’s program. With FoldA going fully online due to COVID19, so goes the Toasterlab AGM. In this hour-long session, the MRPA Advisory Board will share updates to recent projects, and talk about the opportunities and challenges faced by engaging in the necessary adaptation to the current realities of producing performance when we can’t gather. 

Annual General Meeting

Projects include:

tMoRPH – Mixed Reality Performance Hack

This session will also introduce Toasterlab’s Mixed Reality Performance Hackathon (tMoRPH), June 13 – 19, which will focus on questions surrounding the delivery of immersive performance content in remote and low-bandwidth conditions and will include a live presentation of I.F. : Indigenous Futurities : Dancing Earth in CyberSpace on June 18. 

Final Projects Presented:

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AltSpaceVR – Performance and XR 2020 (PXR2020) – October 2 & 3, 9 & 10, 2020

For the fourth Toasterlab gathering, we partnered on Performance and XR 2020 (PXR2020), a Virtual Reality Symposium for Canadian artists and XR technologists, exploring creation and performance in XR.

The symposium occurs over four sessions in Virtual Reality, and includes a Keynote presentation by Yelena Rachitsky, Executive Producer at Oculus Experience, and Endnote presentation by interdisciplinary artist Casey Koyczan. Canadian theatre artists will examine virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality (collectively known as XR) in the creation of live performance, developing and sharing strategies with industry leaders and XR Programmers. With virtual presentations of artistic works by Electric Company Theatre, Single Thread Theatre, Jo Jack et John, Toasterlab, and others, PXR2020 aims to foster creative experimentation with these emerging mediums in dialogue with the IT sector.

Presentations Include:

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Online – Level Up: The Dramaturgy of Digital Performance and Design / Associated Designers of Canada – January 18 – February 18, 2021

Engaging in meaningful conversations on digital tools in live performance

Associated Designers of Canada and ToasterLab presented the symposium Level Up: The Dramaturgy of Digital Performance and Design livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv from Monday 18 January to Saturday 13 February 2021.

Hosted by The Associated Designers of Canada, this symposium consisted of a series of presentations and moderated discussions between presenters and attendees which actively brought together collaborators from across the country in an online platform that is safe and without risk, an absolute necessity for the success of our Canadian performing arts ecology at this time.

All events were free to attend, and open to everyone, members of the ADC and non-members alike!

Check out the Symposium Schedule for full details.

Presentations:

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Online/Mozilla Hubs VR – FoldA – June 5, 2021

The sixth and final gathering of the Atelier was planned in partnership with FoldA again. With FoldA continuing fully online due to COVID19, so goes the Toasterlab AGM and final presentation.

This workshop/exhibition shares the findings from the Atelier projects, how they were accomplished, what was created, and how you can get started in the most appropriate format we know how: an immersive exhibition in the social VR platform Hubs. 

For this special exhibit launch, viewers were invited to join a tour led by the Toasterlab team to explore the projects and get your questions answered about the related VR content! The Hubs Room, a dedicated virtual world that is browser-based and requires no special equipment, will remain open to come back to and visit from June 5th onwards. 

Focused on more accessible and cost-effective technology, this session is a great way to enter the matrix for the artist without Oculus funding. But, whether you are entering VR for the first time, or if you’re a Dactyl Nightmare champion, this session is geared towards expanding your thinking about performance and extended reality.

Launch Hubs Exhibition
Intro Video on how to enter the Hubs Exhibition on Headset.

Advisory Board

Meagan Byrne
Paul Cegys
Elly Jessop
(2019/2020)
Beth Kates
Adrienne Mackey
(2019/2020)
Taien Ng-Chan
Jacob Niedzwiecki
Sadah Espii Proctor (2020/2021)
Patrick Rizzotti
Sydney Skybetter

Support

The Toasterlab Mixed Reality Performance Atelier is made possible by the generous support of…